Also known as…
Samoas Fudge Babies!
No, not the spicy Indian potato thing. That’s a samosa. This is a samoa. You don’t want to get the two confused! 
Awhile back, I posted a recipe for Raw Thin-Mint Brownies.
In that post, I vowed to someday try making raw samoas, my favorite girl-scout cookies as a child.
Gosh, my children are pretty.
Certainly prettier than those poor Thin Mint Brownies!
Samoas Babies
- Packed 1/2 cup dates (90g)
- 2 tbsp unsweetened shredded coconut (30g)
- 1/16 tsp pure vanilla extract
- scant 1/8 tsp salt
- 1-2 tbsp chocolate chips or bar (14-28g)
Put all the ingredients together in your food processor, and blend. (I like to make 1/2 a batch and use the Magic Bullet short cup.) You can reserve a few of the chocolate chips to add, post-blending, if you so desire. See below for nutrition information.
Nutrition Facts for Samoas Babies:
Serving Size: 45 grams (the size of a Larabar)
- 175 calories
- 8 g fat
- 2 g protein
- 5 g fiber
- 0 g added sugars
When I set out to create a fudge baby version of the famous Samoas girl-scout cookie, the first thing I did was look up ingredients for the real Samoas.
Do you know what I found?
It wasn’t pretty: Sugar, vegetable oil (partially-hydrogenated palm kernel and/or cottonseed oil, soybean and palm oil), enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), coconut, corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk (condensed milk, sugar), cocoa, sorbitol, glycerin, invert sugar, cocoa processed with alkali,cornstarch, salt, caramelized sugar, dextrose, soy lecithin, carrageenan, leavening, natural and artificial flavor
Anyone want to count how many times some form of sugar is listed in there? (Answer: six)
Sounds more like a science experiment than a cookie. Does anyone else find it upsetting that they’re allowed to produce such cookies and feed them—in bulk—to unsuspecting young girls (not to mention the rest of the population that buys the cookies from the scouts). I just don’t understand…
Why do they have to make junk?
Healthy food can taste delicious, as I say in my About Me page.
So why don’t they make a healthier cookie for the girl scouts to sell? Unfortunately, I know the answer: cost. It’s cheaper for companies to mass-produce cookies with chemical-y ingredients and preservatives than it’d be for them to use real, natural ingredients (i.e. ingredients found in cookies that people would bake at home!). Who ends up suffering? The consumers.
Don’t get me wrong…
I’m not saying that eating a girl-scout cookie every now and then is going to hurt you. I truly believe it’s perfectly healthy for people to occasionally eat unhealthy foods (as long as they don’t stress about it afterwards). Stress over achieving a “perfect” diet seems far worse for one’s health than eating processed junk every once in a while. No, what I’m upset about is the fact that manufacturers are allowed to produce said processed junk in the first place! Yes, America is a free country. But does this mean companies have the right to add to their products whatever unhealthy (and, in some cases, dangerous) ingredients they desire? And then they aggressively target these products towards children?! Marketing and deceptive advertising strategies can fool even the most well-intentioned consumers.
Ah, but I digress. Let’s get back to the fun stuff, shall we?
These are actually nut-free!
I improved upon the recipe after the photo-shoot, which is why the babies in the photos have nuts. (Please don’t take that sentence the wrong way.) Do they taste exactly like samoas cookies? No, but that wasn’t the taste/texture I set out to achieve when making these. They’re not raw samoas, they’re raw samoas fudge babies!
So what do they taste like?
Well, imagine a Samoa-flavored Larabar.
And click for a list of all the Homemade Larabar Flavors.
Katie these are the prettiest yet (and quite possibly the BEST flavor)!
I love samoas! What is the recipe after adding nuts? I think I would prefer them that way. And what is the chocolate-y sauce you covered them with?
So many questions! You can see how eager I am to make these. =]
I don’t have the nut recipe off-hand, but I wrote it down somewhere… now it’s just a question of finding it! It was kinda like my peanut butter babies recipe, but with pine nuts subbed for the peanuts and then a little coconut flour added in. And the chocolate chips, obviously ;).
And the chocolate sauce in the photos is this: Chocolate Butter: https://lett-trim.today/2010/05/20/homemade-artisana-cacao-bliss/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
thank you thank you thank you for making this nut free! i have a nut allergy, and am SO excited to try my first fudge babies!
You are a GENIUS!!! These look delicious, and samoas happen to be my favorite!
I never even heard of samoas! And yeah, I totally thought you’d made chocolate samosas….and my first thought was, “If Katie’s made them then they must be good!” Ha! My boyfriend has been munching my un-sold bake sale items….last night he was like, “I dunno why these didn’t sell because they’re better than any store bought piece o’ c**p!! So yeah, they have been put to good use. He said he was gonna buy them too so it’s all good 🙂 xx
LOLOL! Well, maybe they’d be good… I mean, apparently there are a lot of people who think chocolate-covered potato chips are yummy, and so maybe… 😉
The chocolate is totally gleaming in that first pic! Those are some sexy-ass samoas. And way better than the Girl Scout version. I did learn, after the scouts here were done with cookie season, that a few of the cookies are vegan this year. I know they’re processed crap, but I plan to buy a few boxes of the vegan ones next year….just cause Girl Scouts are awesome!
Wait, what?! Some are vegan? I looked it up on the website FAQs and it said they wouldn’t make vegan cookies because it’s too small a % of the population. I’m hoping maybe they changed their minds and just haven’t updated the website?
I am actually highly against real girl scout cookies, not only because they’re fully of crummy ingredients, so I am super happy you are doing this. It’s supposed to be an organization teaching young girls to be aware of their actions and their choices and how they affect the world, and yet the cookies use palm oil, the number one source of deforestation in Southeast Asia (and when you think of how many cookies they are selling collectively with this ingredient…well). A couple of young girls boycotted them in my city recently (I’m proud to say I actually babysat one of them once–she’s friends with one of the little girls I used to babysit lol). They’re simply a point-blank representation of exactly what the hypocrisy and propaganda of the food industry is in America today (girl scouts go, “green”).
These are the REAL samoas, not those “girl scout cookies.” I think they should make young girls aware of this and try to take a stand!! Little girls could actually learn something and go green by being aware of the ingredients in the food they are selling. It’s just scandalous that they keep selling those other ones by the thousands, having no idea what the global impact is of what they are doing, and yet it’s supposed to be an organization based the exact values they are going against by selling those cookies.
Wow, what a precocious (in a good way) child! I never thought to question such things when I was younger. I just went along with what I was told. Well, to an extent… I DID become a vegetarian at age 8… but that only lasted a week! Still, I tried ;).
Yeah, she is 🙂
I never did either. Like most, I was a completely clueless kid–I just thought if my parents were doing it, it must be right.
And aw, see, even that’s pretty amazing. Being vegetarian didn’t occur to me until not a year ago, I’m sad to say. I always felt a small bit of guilt, or more like, a little angel on my left shoulder whispering, “Is this really ok??” eating meat, but I never really regarded her because everything around me told me that it was.
Thanks for replying to so many of my comments 🙂 I know you have a ton to respond to, and you are so kind and sweet for doing so! Take care 🙂
I’m making these for my mom!!!! Seriously, samosa are her FAVORITE!!! But I’ll stick to the thin mints 😉
And I agree that it is totally disgusting what they put in food. Seriously, it is DISGUSTING!!! It isn’t even real food anymore 🙁
Just stick to the natural foods and you should be fine. But seriously, It’s hard to find a packaged food that doesn’t have less than 5 ingredients. Even my whole wheat pitas have some unsightly things in them: sucralose. Oh well. People are all about convenience these days. They’ll do anything to avoid laying a finger on a wooden spoon. I wish it were the 1840’s so that we could have some actual things without all the trans fat.
i’ll take your samoas over their samoas. any day. 🙂 i agree with everything you said!
what beautiful photography!!!! I cant wait until there are inventions where you can eat whatever food you see on TV or the internet. haha I can only imagaine how COOL that would be! 😉
I should make these..my family LOVES Samoas. My bro bought a box a lil while ago, they only lasted like a day in my house!! haha
Awwww thank u! I needed that comment, because foodgawker keeps turning my photos down (including these), and it’s really butchering my self-confidence in my photography skills (or lack thereof!). So seriously, your comment meant the world to me!
CCK, I can’t believe your photos are being turned down; they look absolutely delicious! 🙂 I live in Australian and although I was in the GG as a youngster, I never quite experienced the cookie-selling to the extent you would have in the USA. Your Somoa Babies look incredibly scrumptious and I can’t wait to try them once I’m able to get my hands on the ingredients. I’ve been a vegan for nearly a decade now and it always excites me to discover new vegan-friendly recipes (especially those containing chocolate). 🙂 A big thank you to you Katie, you’re amazing and I’m glad I recently stumbled across your blog! 🙂 <3<3<3
I’m so glad you found me too! And I’ve been a vegan for… 9 years? So almost a decade, just like you! (Wow, I didn’t realize it’d been that long. That makes me feel old LOL!)
what!! well im glad to hear it. i think the photos are beautiful 😉